


The Warmth In Hands Like Ours

by Strigimorphaes



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Drowning, Gentleness at the end, Love Confessions, M/M, Masochism, Mild Gore, Naked Cuddling, Reunions, Self-Harm, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, angbang, inhuman valar, war of the powers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-17
Updated: 2015-05-17
Packaged: 2018-03-29 12:12:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3895858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Strigimorphaes/pseuds/Strigimorphaes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They are more like forces of nature than the people they imitate, more like fire and air than anything human.<br/>It storms when Mairon finally confesses.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Warmth In Hands Like Ours

**Author's Note:**

> I said I'd write it, so here it is, finally. All I have to say here is a "thank you" to my [ beta-reader](http://do-not-speak-of-dragon-fire.tumblr.com/) and a reminder that you can reach me on my own [tumblr ](http://epsilonium.tumblr.com/) .

 

I.

The walls of Angband are thick, inches upon inches of iron and metal, and no matter what the weather is like outside - if it rains or snows, if the wind descends from the icy peaks surrounding the fortress – it can never be heard.

As Mairon walks down the halls, there is only the dull sound of machinery far below him as hammers strike metal and his own creations lumber to work. It persists through doors too heavy for most mortals to open and into damp stairways where the stone walls make his steps echo as he ascends.

Beyond a door at the end of the hall he finds an exit leading out to a narrow stone bridge.

The weather assaults him, wind tearing at his clothes - the thin fabric of coloured veils. A mixture of hail, snow and rain falls, but Mairon marches on. An uncoordinated orc would have fallen from the bridge, no railings to save him, but it is not a bridge made for orcs. It is made for a single lookout to rush to the mountain path on the other side and scout the area from the peak of the cliff, and it is for whomever wants the strange solitude such a place could offer. A perfect bird's-eye view of Angband and the wastes around it awaits whomever makes the difficult crossing.

Mairon strides across, ignoring the hail and how slippery the stones have gotten. He doesn't even need to look down, staring up at the sky instead. The clouds are dark, but around their edges there are slight traces of red from where the fiery mountains erupt. Grey light envelops the peaks of the mountains and the sharp angles and spikes of Angband below, and Mairon feels pride at the sight. Then he looks only forward as he sets foot on solid ground again. He follows the mountain path up the steep incline, past jagged outcroppings and boulders, until he makes it to a flat plateau some fifteen meters above.

As he rounds the corner, he stops and inhales sharply. A dark silhouette stands before him, turned away, gazing out over the landscape.

"My lord," Mairon whispers, and Melkor hears him despite the weather, like always.

The vala looks back over his shoulder, sending Mairon an unreadable glance. And the maiar yearns to know it, like always, and takes another step forward. He sees a small cloud of mist rising from Melkor's shape. (He knows that Melkor's body is warm like a furnace, hot to the touch, his breath turning to steam more often than not).

“You summoned me?” Mairon clarifies.

A great gust of wind sweeps by them, between them. It makes Melkor's cape convulse and twist around his shape, and Mairon, though further back and less exposed, is not spared either.

“I did,” Melkor says. “Come.”

Mairon strides through the sleet to his master's side, finally close enough to see his features, perfectly illuminated by lightning - long, black hair whipped around by the wind, a hint of malice in his eyes that - for Mairon - does not detract from his beauty. Melkor's hands are clad in gloves that only accentuate his long fingers, ending in claw-like, metal points. It is such a hand that he lays on Mairon's shoulder, heavy as a ton of iron yet still almost gentle in its pressure.

In the distance, lightning strikes.

"What do you see?" Melkor asks.

Maron does not answer at first. He feels the thunder reverberate in his bones.

"It's beautiful," he says, after a long pause. Another blue light scars the sky, leaving white after-images on his retinas, and he shudders at the sight. He thinks that he knows what Melkor sees in the storm; he thinks they must see the same. There is beauty in the exercise of power, the pleasure of un-making, and he feels as if he's staring at the essence of a vala – or at least what that essence once were - a force of nature, wild and unbound. “Freedom.”

“How so?”

Melkor's fingers dig ever-so-lightly into Mairon's shoulder. He does not show that he feels pain and answers calmly - "It is… It would never happen in Valinor. Not really. Not like this. _Heavens forbid_ a flower got torn apart or a single tree fell. I never saw that. But then they never get this surge of power. The light, the sound – There's more to the world than Yavanna's gardens, and this is _better_.”

Melkor tilts his head, and though his expression does not change, Mairon feels as if he has given the right answer. There is something in Melkor's eyes, a hint of something Mairon wishes he could understand, for he feels that he knows everything about his master save for that look.

Though Melkor may be satisfied with silence save for the boom of thunder, Mairon feels more words burning on his tongue. With his heartbeat quickening – he never really got used to the sensation of it – he dares to follow an impulse.

"You offer freedom.”

The sharp point of Melkor's fingertip traces a line between the joint of Mairon’s shoulder and the dip of his neck. Mairon swallows, then opens his mouth again. It's easier for him to speak when there is only his master with him, when he has no appearances to keep up. And his eyes can wander across the darkened sky to the distant horizon while he speaks, getting lost in the game of making his words work together just so, forming the most enticing sentences he can.

"When we met, while I was with Aulë,” he begins, “I had grown tired of working with baubles when I could do so much more. I dared to try to make everything more effective, better, but I was taken from my forge because I had, in my folly, breached the limit of my craft...“ There is no bitterness nor nostalgia in his voice, only a calm statement of fact. Or so he hopes. "Aulë gave me my hammer back as I promised that I'd create the beautiful things I had made before and not bother myself with things only for the Vala to know.”

The grip on his shoulder lessens. Melkor still stares away from him.

"You," Mairon continues, "Offer something better. I have chosen to serve you, and that does wonders for one's loyalty."

"Do not give me half-truths,” Melkor says, turning to face his lieutenant. “There is more than that to it. Another reason that you’re loyal.”

Mairon looks down, bowing his head.

"You love me." Melkor states the fact simply, yet there is in his voice something deeper, the word love clinging hollow and meaningless in his mouth. He withdraws his hand and leaves Mairon aching for touch again. The world grows colder until he steps closer and Mairon can feel the heat radiating from his shape. "Of course, it is the wrong word for what you feel, but there is no better choice. Perhaps one could say that you _want_ me, or that you _revere_ me, or that you _desire_ me - am I correct?"

Snowflakes melt as they touch Melkor's black hair. Mairon stares at that for a moment, unable to form an answer because Melkor is right but he hadn't assumed that anything would come of it, that it would be put into words, that Melkor – that Melkor would reach out and hold him by the jaw, gloved fingers causing points of pain. The distance between them is gone in a matter of seconds, their lips meeting in a rushed, forced kiss. It's too warm, burning compared to the freezing temperatures around them, yet Mairon wants nothing more than to drink it in.

He knows he should feel blessed and taken aback by the honor, but instead he only feels hungry and proud. He knows it shines through his eyes when Melkor looks at him afterwards - and then he is thrown, suddenly, to the ground.

Mairon feels rocks and shards cut into him: the cold stabs into his back, thin clothes doing too little to help. He looks up and sees Melkor standing above him like a giant of old.

Mairon does not know why.

He likes that.

He likes having kissed a storm, his body marked with burning heat at the edge of his mouth, old scars of its lightning woven across his skin, words like thunder reverberating in his head.

Melkor kneels down, and for a moment Mairon thinks he is being helped up, then that Melkor intends to straddle his waist. Instead he feels a knee getting pushed into his stomach, causing him to briefly lose his breath as the air is forced out of him by the weight. Melkor's body-warmth spreading across his stomach is a stark contrast to the cold against his back, and Mairon makes fists of his hands though he does not change his expression: it is still one of limitless fascination.

Melkor smiles as if amused by some thought. His right hand reaches for Mairon's, his fingertips ghosting over knuckles and white flesh before he grips tightly around the wrist. Mairon feels the warmth of it. A thumb strokes along the joint and Mairon's eyes follow the movement.

For a moment it is pleasant. Gentle. Mairon expects it, though, when Melkor tightens that grip until it's painful, then crushing, then unbearable. It's almost too much, all these physical sensations caused by someone who normally doesn't ever touch him, but Mairon doesn't become lost. Maybe Melkor won't let him, he doesn't know. What matters is that he experiences every second with surprising clarity.

Three different bones snap, and in the hollows between them Melkor's fingers press against veins and muscle. White marble breaks through flushed skin. Drop by agonizing drop, red blood dots the fresh snow, spills between white-knuckled fingers. Mairon gasps once before he vows to stay silent. He has control over his voice and his tongue. He always has. While the pain grows and while nails dig into his skin, he pushes himself up, resting on the elbow of his free arm. After a moment's hesitation, he looks Melkor in his eyes wondering if this is a punishment.

He sees...

Love, of course, is the wrong word.

But it's the best word he has.

This hurt is different, he realizes. Maybe he is the only one who could realize, in this situation, that Melkor is not punishing him, nor is he inflicting wanton cruelty.

This has purpose.

"I am the most loyal," Mairon says, “I let you do this to me."

"And you’re the most beautiful," is the answer.

And Mairon has no doubts that by their standards, he's a masterpiece at the moment, his fair shape only enhanced by the unnatural angle of his hand. Melkor seems captivated, his gaze fixed on Mairon who relishes in being the center of his lord's attention. He slides down until he lies flat on his back, the pain making it hard for him to do anything else since Melkor is still gripping so tightly.

"I am," he gasps.

When Melkor lets go, it is relief almost unlike anything else Mairon has felt. His right hand falls limply to his side and into the snow. The knee no longer weights on his stomach; he can breathe with ease again.

"Given freedom, you'll choose me," Melkor says. It's a statement not up for debate, not that Mairon would ever question it.

When he looks up, it seems to him like the dark shape of his master fills all the world.

"I-" Mairon begins, but he is pulled by his hair into another kiss, and Mairon's sharp teeth has them tasting his blood mixed with something else that Mairon has never tasted before, but now knows that he can't be without. He lifts his left hand into Melkor's hair and pulls him closer, tugging at it so that he, too, causes pain. He smiles into the kiss, runs his tongue over sharp teeth and feels hot breath on his cheek.

Melkor pulls back with a slight smile as Mairon's nails draw red lines down his jaw.

When they are separated and quiet, the storm fills the space between them wholly. It surges to a climax, the lightning closer and the thunder loud enough to make Mairon think of trembling mountains. When Melkor withdraws, Mairon gets back on his feet by himself. He wonders how he must look, wet from melted ice and bruised all over.

"Of course it's mutual," he muses. He holds up his left hand, still intact, and Melkor takes it into his.

"So it is."

Their eyes meet and Mairon almost dares Melkor to repeat the performance, but Melkor's grip remains light.

“Is this the start of something?”

Melkor answers Mairon's question with one of his own. “Should it be?”

“That's an easy choice.”

Mairon brings Melkor's hand briefly to his lips before letting go. He wonders when it stopped being madness to kiss the hand that hurts you. Then his thoughts of other possibilities, of the past, cease as they set off towards the bridge and the warmth of Angband together.

The wind lessens, giving Mairon safe passage as he walks behind his master but still drowning out a small sigh of pain when he pulls his broken hand closer to his body. "I feel I should mention that reports came in from the south-east," he says. He pulls at his cape to make it cover his right arm, the dull throbbing growing in power.

"I will hear them," Melkor says, but the words sounds like a mere afterthought. "Take care of your wound. Mend it by yourself or by the medics... Just don't let it fester. I like you fair."

"So do I," Mairon comments. He receives no reaction, and Mairon supposes that's as close as he'll get to permission.

They part almost as soon as they're inside, Mairon heading out to find medical help. In Valinor, they had healing - ointments and herbs - but these have lost their effect for Melkor’s people who instead have a multitude of tools, potions and theories. The doctors know how and where to cut to reach the bones and set them right, how to separate inflammation from healthy flesh and how addition or subtraction of blood can save a wounded warrior. They can take venom or innards from living creatures and use them to keep men and elves and orcs alike living and breathing. They can heal without prayers.

Mairon lets himself be mended. A medic wraps gauze tight around his wrist, and at the end of the day he still has a maiar's ability to overcome the damage to his physical body.

He saunters down to his forge and stares at the fire, at his workbench cluttered with tools and half-finished creations. Even though he is as ambidextrous as elves, there is only so much one can do with one hand only. He stands before the forge with his eyes closed, feeling the heat against his face, a faint echo of Melkor's presence. Then he takes a bucket of melted snow-water and douses the flames. There is a splash and a sizzling sound as they die out, and between the thick walls the world is silent.

 

II.

 

The years that pass are noisy and colourful, black and blue, bruises on a timeline running parallel to a spine.

Then an entire war passes by, tearing up flesh and leaving bodies in the snow.

Then everything is silent.

Then the soot covers the frozen earth, the clouds overhead are heavy with smoke, and the iron walls stand as looming shadows. As Mairon makes his way north, these things slowly give way to blinding white and searing blue. The light of the far-off trees - not gentle as it would probably be in Valinor, but cold, reflected from ice - meets his eyes, almost painfully bright.

He keeps walking.

There are no paths to follow. Later, he will find his way back by his own footsteps, but for now he has no sense of direction other than a desire to go north. He has to leave Angband behind him even for just a few hours.

The place no longer feels like it used to.

For one, it has been hurt: it lies now as a wounded animal with exposed innards, orcs and molten metal spilling out of it like blood and distraught cells. The War of the Powers tore away skin and bone, but the Valar’s light have not reached its innermost shadows and deepest bowels. That is where Mairon works, tending to the wounds. Tending to the armies of orcs and speaking with Balrogs, rebuilding.

Waiting.

Melkor is far away, now, and the everyday leadership is a familiar, but heavy mantle to bear alone for the maia.

He draws the cape closer around him even though he doesn’t really feel cold yet. Fire burns inside him, a primal flame not yet diminished. In Angband, he might freeze, but out here he can let emotion make him feel heat all the way out in his fingertips.

He follows a semi-frozen river. It is barely a yard wide, and the water is dirty with refuse from the mines. Snow crunches under his feet, the wind pulling his many light veils along. To the myriad of underlings, the layers of silk and see-through materials obscuring his shape and hair and face make him seem otherworldly. An emissary of the living god they serve. The mountains do not care for that.

Maybe that is why Mairon, watching the grand map placed in the council-room that survived even the war, decided to carve Melkor's name - and his own, in lesser print, within the greater name of his lord - into the parchment lands. Walking along one of the thinner lines he thinks little and says nothing, alone as he is, until he reaches the inlet.

It is wide and light, chunks of ice floating in the clear water. Further out there are icebergs, contorted white shapes, twisted angles and panes, light dancing in the crystals. And even further out lies the endless blue of the ocean, and Mairon wonders if Ulmo sees him as he stands there by the edge of the water. Most likely not - why would he watch this part of the world, so utterly desolate? The Valar do, after all, have Melkor already.

Without him this region is merely an uninteresting, desolate wasteland. There are no plants in the small bay before Mairon, no life: nothing but stone.

He can see his own reflection clearly in the still water. His skin has become so dark that it is almost black, and absentmindedly he brings a hand to his cheek. He wipes away a line of dark soot, dirtying his sleeve.

"It's the smithies," Mairon says. He takes a step into the water, and cold begins to seep through the thin leather of his boots, but it does little to deter him. "The orcs work in the caves, where the smoke has nowhere to go. We hide in the dark underneath the cliffs, where the soot lines the walls. I've become all swarthy." He almost smiles, but it looks wrong on his reflection there beneath him.

He steps forwards again so that the water reaches his knees. The physical sensation shocks him back into his body, not the halls under what used to be Angband, and in a brief moment he wonders why he spoke aloud. Then a wave passes, the ice-water reaching above where he is already numb. The pain is familiar. He cannot control the waves or the temperature of the water, only his own footsteps as he approaches its depths: he can only surrender to the cold.

His master is such a force of nature, too.

"My own smithies are of course cleaner," he says, his voice fallen to a whisper. "I still work, when I find time..."

Of course Melkor doesn't care for what Mairon does in his spare time - he feels the next wave as a slap. Yet he almost doesn't care because he remembers his forge and instead of just the embers or the way it looks when he works there alone, the situation makes him recall how it was when Melkor would join him there. He remembers being pushed against his own workbench, inches away from white-hot iron hoping that Melkor wouldn't push him too far, almost scared of the fire that seemed suddenly out of his control. He remembers all the beautiful things he forged for his lord - gems that he cut and made into jewelry to adorn him. Armor black as night. Weapons, sleek blades, and how they would sometimes be tested on his willing body because that was a sort of praise, wasn't it? To be so desired that a being that destroyed thousands would take care not to seriously injure him, to be an object of Melkor's attention, completely, for a short time.

But in the end, Melkor is like the sea. Endlessly divided, flowing a hundred places at once, changing every coast he touches.

Mairon takes another step, the water above his waist making his stomach twist and tie itself in sharp knots. His entire body begs him to go back, but a longing inside him is stronger.

It might be arrogant for one being alone, no matter if he were man or maia or elf, to lay claim to the attention of the sea. But Mairon knows that he is arrogant, and he'll try.

It feels like his master is with him now. There is a familiar twist of a dagger when his hand brushes against a chunk of ice, and there's the shaking of his legs beneath him, threatening to drop him to his knees. He threads his fingers through the water and watches as soot and dust are cleansed away, a dark cloud forming around him. The polluted water reflects him all the more clearly, and with clumsy, cold fingers he reaches up to untie the braids he wears equally for vanity and utility. Strands of coppery hair fall around him. The veils flutter to the water. Wet and heavy, they sink slowly around him: The water becomes red and gold and yellow.

"I wait," Mairon says. "I prepare."

He rules the halls in his master's absence. He oversees the orcs in all their pits and crevices and rebuilds hidden halls, draws maps on the rough surface of the frozen stones.

His legs are numb, now, and his chest constricts as his body fights to breathe.

He works in what were once ruins. He has made something more of them now. The army grows and he doesn't need sleep so he stays up, night after night, straying to his metal and fires while the commanders and lieutenants turn in. This pilgrimage to the northern reaches is the only reprieve he allows himself.

He takes a final step, now in water to his chest, and he hears himself gasping. Around the orcs he suppresses every sign of weakness, of which he has few, but here, he has nobody to answer to but the force that is hurting him, pressing against him from all sides. His hair and clothes form a trail behind him, and the ash and soot almost becomes a cape. He cannot move his arms or head without his hair and the waterlogged veils clinging to his body, cannot speak for his teeth clattering and breath failing. There is a fire inside him, but he is testing it. There is, after all, nobody else who will.

The words come past his lips only through great effort.

"I miss you."

This is also something that he does, and it is strange to put it in words. For all the plans he makes are for someone else and all the things he forges are made while whispering prayers. Of all the nights he spends not sleeping there are a few where he tries to classify it, reducing it to a strength or a weakness to work accordingly - but nothing is ever so simple when it comes to Melkor. It is a weakness to let one's emotions gain the upper hand, it is a weakness to be loving, to be sentimental and yet - it is a strength to be devoted, unquestioning, faithful.

Faith makes him turn around, gazing once more at the way whence he came, and fall backwards.

He catches a glimpse of the mountains in the distance. Smoke winds it way across the sky, forming the lines of great letters. Here, he carved the names, and in the rivers and rocks also. The mountains are hollowed out, stripped of Aule's ores, and in the hidden dark the underground rivers deliver energy to new machines that grind away, their oils and heavy metals falling back into that same water. Roads wind across hills and all of Arda, and Mairon takes some strange pleasure in knowing that the elves sometimes walk on them without knowing that they walk on bones and the bated breaths of slaves. The smoke is all of that, and Mairon falls under the surface filled with pride.

At first he feels heavy, the water weighing down his clothes. It makes his hands feel heavy as he wraps his arms around himself, ruining clothes, ruining lungs, ruining mind. His words flow up with the bubbles.

His thoughts stay in the deep with him, and the cold feels like pins and needles pushing into his flesh from every angle, but when he accepts it, there's a certain lightness to find in it. He is suspended in the water, weightless, now, as he floats.

He closes his eyes and feels the underwater currents beat against his body. Feels pain and sea water in every wound he has already. Feels an embrace, fingers ghosting along his side, mouth along his collarbone, laughter in the back of his own constricted throat.

"I found you," he wants to say, but comes out as gasps and water and guttural almost-speech.

His back touches the bottom.

Maybe he'll lay there for a while, he thinks.

He opens his eyes to look up at the ice. It's a mess of shapes and colours above him. Blue and white. Reflections of waves. Patterns.

He watches as a veil tears itself from him and, taken by some current, tries to reach the surface. It falls to the bottom again before long.

A bird soars past the inlet, a black spot against the white light.

Mairon's heartbeat almost stops for a moment, breaking the illusion of timelessness enough that he can touch his feet to the ground and attempt to get up, in, out, fighting against ice and current like he would sometimes fight to get back to himself after a kiss, a word -

He walks to the shore slowly. Now the black is all but gone from him.

He stands for a moment, tall and still, as a pillar of salt staring out towards the black clouds gathering on the sky.

 

III.

 

Everything has its end, even the light of the trees, even the long wait. For the tug on Mairon's heart - the feeling that he expects will probably last the longest of all the things in the world - has grown stronger until it draws him from smoke-filled hollows out onto walls guarded with spells that make them seem like ruins still to a stranger. Standing there his eyes seek the horizon, and he waits while breathing in the chill of the air. The man beside him, a proud Easterling, makes a show out of standing straight as he guards this stretch of the rampart. Mairon can feel his nervousness. Can see it flickering in his eyes and fingers as he clenches his grip around his spear. Many of the men have been like him since the dark descended, for they are still slaves to their basic instincts no matter how many times they are told that _they_ are now the creatures in the night.

"There's nothing to worry about," Mairon says.

This startles the man, but he doesn't show it apart from an intake of breath barely audible above the sound of the wind. "Yes, my Lord."

"In fact, I think you should go to your superiors and tell them that there is reason to rejoice. Do you not feel it?"

The man stares out into the air, afraid, it seems, to meet Mairon's eyes. "We pay little heed to superstition nowadays, but the women have been tying knots for luck and knocking on wood. I feel _something_ is coming, my Lord, but now that you have told me to, I shall not fear it." He straightens his back, satisfied with his words.

"I know what you feel," Mairon says quietly. "Tell them all your lord and master Melkor is about to arrive."

And with that the soldier scurries away. Mairon turns his attention to the view before him - the presence grows stronger, and with it comes a longing that Mairon figures he is the only one to pick up on. Longing for known places and soft shadow, and with it pain, and in it light. Mairon cannot make sense of the drifting emotions.

He watches as the banners are hoisted before the gates, the spells lifted and the torches lit. Words flutter like ash in the wind, mouth to mouth, breath to breath. Mairon takes slow steps down the stairs and out in front of the clutter of waiting people.

The first glimpse of Melkor is enough to make anyone's blood run cold: He is almost formless. Although there is a man's figure somewhere, it is surrounded by clouds and shadow. These disperse only slowly as he comes closer and solidifies. Whirling dust forms black armor and a cape that should flutter in the wind, but somehow doesn't, too heavy as it hangs off of slender shoulders. The face can hardly be discerned. Only the eyes, glowing like coals, are fixed in place. All else shifts and changes, black and charred and hidden by hair and crown and cowl. His hands are claw-like and dark as if burned, holding something wrapped in cloth.

Nobody speaks as he walks through the gates. Only Mairon approaches him, and he takes his place four steps behind. Each of Melkor's footsteps reverberates in the great courtyard, under stone arches and on snow-covered tiles. Finally, just when the silence seems too heavy to bear, Melkor walks to the top of the great stairs and pauses before the entrance to the fortress itself. Turning to face the people gathered below, he needs not raise his voice above a whisper to be heard - but he does, his words clear and loud.

"I have returned to be your King, and I bring you great tidings. Fear no more that the elves should make thralls of you or the other free peoples of middle-earth, for their royal houses are divided and struggling in the dark that they fear. The light of the Vala I have stolen away; it is now only with us.”

At the last words, he unveils his burden and lets all the people gaze upon the gems hidden in the black cloth. They are like stars, and Mairon finds himself looking at how the starlight illuminates Melkor's face. He sees victory written in every line and angle. Their eyes meet, and Mairon lowers his head.

When Melkor's footsteps are heard again, he looks up, suddenly hungry for another glimpse of the light, but it is hidden away again. The men feel blind down at the bottom of the stairs, and a werewolf howls somewhere in the hills. Heavy doors open before Melkor as he lets Mairon lead him through subtle gestures and feelings shared. So much has changed since he was last here. Mairon leads him to the throne room, a great hall not yet used, for Mairon never felt it proper to take that great iron seat. Melkor probably reads that from his thoughts, but he says nothing of it.

He takes his proper place, and Mairon is the first to kneel before him.

A long time goes by with various officers and lesser lords swearing that old fealty is still alive. They bend at their knees like animals whose legs are pierced by arrows, whose backs are burdened by too great a weight. It takes strength to stand tall in front of Melkor. Mairon chooses to stand behind him, in the shadow of the throne where he feels like he belongs.

It seems like nothing exists outside Angband. Nothing outside the walls, outside the light of the torches. Blackness waits on the other side of the windows.

Row after row of servants sneak glances at their king.

Mairon feels proud.

 _Look what I've made_ , he wants to say, _Look at how much I've done for us_. In the half-dark all that can be seen of some of the creatures Mairon bred are the whites of their eyes and the pale pearl of their teeth. Melkor accepts them, too. For many hours he speaks and lets informants tell him about the state of things. Mairon could not talk back even if he wanted to, his voice faltering when he opens his mouth. The longing was easier when Melkor was not there in the flesh a few meters away.

At last Melkor turns from the crowd, his face still in flux, dark with dust and embers. He places a hand on Mairon's shoulder.

"Shall we take our leave?" It is not a question, but a command that Mairon eagerly obeys. He leads Melkor down halls and walkways, out and then inside again, the whole path passing as a blur. The world serves no other purpose now than to provide a variety of light and shadow to illuminate Melkor's face, a variety of ceilings and airs to echo his footsteps and breaths.

They stop outside the door to Melkor's chambers - a threshold Mairon rarely crossed even before the War of the Powers. Melkor strides inside as if the last years never happened, not for a second doubting that everything will be the way he left it, and Mairon has seen to it that he is right.

"Come," Melkor bids him, holding the door.

Mairon nods and steps inside. The candle in his hand casts a weak, yellow light. He looks at the paintings and rugs and tapestries for only a moment. Then at the bed, wine-red cloth covering down, hardly used by a being that does not need to sleep.

When the door closes behind them, Melkor lays his burden on a small, elven-style table. He snatches the obsolete candle from Mairon's hand, extinguishes it and lets it fall to the floor before drawing back the cloth. The light of the Simarils looks like the light of the trees reflected through the ocean, wavelike patterns spreading across the ceiling. It must shine from their windows, illuminating the courtyard, a beacon saying that things will change.

"I thought the light would hurt us," Mairon says.

"Light is light," Melkor answers. "Why should we not be able to withstand it?"

Mairon manages to turn his gaze from this heavenly light to Melkor's eyes. They are like amber. This remains unchanged even as the rest of his being keeps shifting. His hair goes through subtle changes of shade and length, sometimes appearing like smoke, while his skin is at once black and grey and pale, flaking off like ash. Mairon reaches out for him, and Melkor lets him touch.

Mairon moves slowly. He touches his lord for the first time in years and years, fingers traveling from brow to cheek to thin lips. He helps Melkor remember the shape and feel of his features, the colour of his eyes and skin and hair. Slowly, Melkor settles into his old shape, a long, drawn-out breath leaving him as he does so. He sheds mist and smoke, becoming the person Mairon knows.

Mairon feels endless relief at the sight of this familiar face.

Only Melkor's hands are still charred black. Mairon looks at them filled with something like worry. "What..." he begins, but Melkor cuts him off.

"The only thing that hurts is touching them," he says, "It was a price I paid."

"You're hurt," Mairon whispers. It is almost strange, the idea of his Lord being hurt in a way that won't simply heal. 

Melkor lifts Mairon's head by his chin. "You shouldn't care. You should only care about us, here, now - I want you."

The kiss is slow and careful. At first Mairon is satisfied with just the feeling of his lips against Melkor's, but within moments he has wrapped his arms around Melkor's waist, pulling them closer. Melkor sighs between hungry kisses, breath hot on Mairon's neck. Mairon halfway expects teeth, but no pain arrives to fulfill his - desire? Fear? The thought is lost between this touch and the next, Melkor's hands settling on Mairon's hips and guiding him gently towards the bed.

Mairon undoes rows of buttons and tightly tied knots himself, eager to let Melkor's hand roam greedily over every inch of exposed skin. His body remembers clearer than his mind being pushed down roughly, being marked and hurt and taken, and the thought makes him feel familiar desire rising. He withdraws to sit down on the bed, urging Melkor wordlessly to follow.

While Melkor undoes his own cape, letting the fabric fall to the floor where it fades away, Mairon wonders what twisted around inside him to make pain and pleasure so thoroughly entwined that he cannot imagine one without the other. Now, his body is already bracing for when Melkor will push him onto his back. He'll draw red lines down his back, delight in his gasps, hold him so tightly something will break -

But all he feels is that the bed gives slightly when Melkor sits down beside him.

They face each other. Equally naked, equally lit by stolen light in a stolen moment. Mairon watches as Melkor's eyes devour him: all the scars that run across his back and shoulders, all the burns on his hands, all the marks of every kind splayed across his skin. He, in turn, sees Melkor's newer wounds, the charcoal hands, the burden resting on shoulders as old as time. A black hand finds a pale one, fingers fitting together.

"Is something wrong?" Mairon asks.

"Why?"

"You don't want me." When he receives no response, Mairon continues - "You're not... forceful. Have I changed?"

"No. I just want something else from you." Melkor lays down, stretching his body out on the duvet, his hand pulling at Mairon. "Come.”

The fabric is cool under Mairon's body, and he finds himself laying on his side, facing Melkor but separated from him by a few inches of air. It is almost cold, but all thoughts of that is silenced when Melkor reaches for him. A wide, warm hand starts at Mairon's collarbone, follows the line to his shoulder and then down his arm, across his bicep, down to his wrist. Fingers caress his skin: when Melkor's hands finds rest and the end of one journey they start anew, tracing his ribs one by one. Mairon dares to move, resting his head in the crook of Melkor's shoulder. He closes his eyes, resigning to the feeling of Melkor's hands exploring his body.

It's all so strange and gentle. Even when Melkor presses him closer, even when he comes so close that Mairon feels only skin against skin and their legs entwine, Melkor is still drawing circles on his back.

“Why?” Mairon asks.

Melkor does not him in the eye as he speaks. “Because I always wanted to posses you. And possessing something means you fear losing it, and I realized in your absence how great that fear had become. Now I find that you are still the most loyal... But it is hard to make words suffice.”

Mairon shakes his head gently. “I know.”

"You wouldn't mind if I covered the light up again."

“No.”

Melkor sits up and looks towards the gems. It is an easy thing for an ainu to do - it requires only a gesture with a hand before a light breeze makes the cloth cover the silmarils.

In an instant, the the dark becomes absolute.

Robbed of Melkor's presence for even a second, Mairon feels naked in a sense far removed from the physical.

The dark is the most complete, inky blackness Mairon has ever seen.

There is no separating outside and inside when he looks to the windows. No separating open and closed eyes. No separating his hand from the rest of everything when he holds it in his view.

Only after witnessing the absolute light of the silmarils can he understand the depths of this absolute darkness. The fear that no dawn will come, ever, that he will be swallowed whole by the absence of light that has been around since before creation.

He calms himself by remembering that he knows this kind of night intimately.

"The dark is just the dark," Melkor says softly. "The dark is me."

"There was a time where there wasn't anything else," Mairon answers. "I remember that."

"I wandered into it, looking for Eru's secrets. We were born there."

"I remember looking at you when we were just flames. Feeling your presence, not seeking you out..."

Mairon’s breathing turns steady. His fingers relax as he opens his hands and his arms.

He breathes in the dark, kisses it, embraces it, lets it fill him utterly. Melkor's arms are on and under and over his own, their legs following the same curves, their faces and mouths aligned along an axis buried in the depths of the earth. Mairon cannot see anything at all. He can only feel and listen, Melkor's breath so heavy and deep, his own a sparrow's by comparison. And even that ceases as they forget about the fabricated need to respirate. Skin presses against skin, and there is pain where the points of bones meet softness. Even that ceases when they forget about the need for bodies, returning to the dark that birthed them for a little while. It comes easier to Mairon who is still young in spirit, who still takes different shapes so often. Melkor finds it harder, only softening instead of disintegrating wholly. Mairon doesn't mind.

Without seeing, the maia feels them bleeding together, blurred at the edges. Not one, _never one_ , but aware that they are made of the same thing. Still Mairon wants to be closer, and Melkor allows it, and for once they move equally quickly towards the same point like stellar bodies that, having left their predestined celestial spheres, will collide out in the emptiness of space.

_I missed you_

_I want to stay with you_

Mairon feels warmth - destructive warmth, that of the center of stars because they know that Varda's creations are not little pinpoints of light but great fires that burn away gases, a constant explosion made holy -

_I did this for you_

He answers the warmth with his own longing, and in the blackness he figures it could almost be tangible, and it would look like open eyes with frozen eyelashes and old wounds reopened, veils and soot in the water-

_I know_

There is something that isn't love. It is possessiveness and it is lust and fear of loss and anger and a desire to have some cliff that all the waves can meet and some star that never burns out and turns to ashes. None of them know who feels it. Both of them do, none of them do, maybe it is the dark, sentient around them, that feels all of this.

When words are spoken, it is from both mouths at once and with a shared breath, in a shared moment that will surely be swallowed in a storm to come.

“I’m glad I chose you.”


End file.
